Tailspin

  “He might make a better uncle,” Savich said. “Remember, that’s about the same number of years that separated Prince Charles and Diana. Look what came of that.”

  “Maybe so. Oh my, I never had such great drugs, even back in college. I feel like flying right off this rock-hard excuse for a bed and out that window, maybe buzz the White House. Is the weather nice?”

  “Yes, bright sunshine, and it might hit eighty-five today.”

  “I have a real good friend who’s a pharmacist and a killer at bridge. After I buzz over his house in Chevy Chase, hopefully ruin the bridge hand he’s playing, I think I’ll fly clear to the West Coast. I don’t want to go back to Lexington—my family are a bunch of nags and doomsayers. And my wife Molly—I tried to make her listen to reason, but she’s got her own rules for reason and won’t listen to mine. Molly kept pushing me until we were on a plane back to Lexington. And then I had to come back here again—but wait now. What kind of sense does that make? Oh, I remember. There was a plane wreck—Jackson was piloting. Is he all right?”

  Savich saw his sudden alarm and said, “Jack is fine now, just headaches from the concussion and some pain from a gash in his leg.”

  “Good, good, he’s okay then. I’ll tell you, even with these excellent pain meds, I still feel like I’m hurting all over.”

  “Understandable. You got thrown around quite a bit. There was a bomb on board the Cessna, but Jack managed to bring it down in a narrow valley. He pulled you out before the plane exploded. You are hurt all over, sir.”

  Sherlock said, “Dr. MacLean, we need to ask you some questions, to try to get a better handle on all of this.”

  MacLean closed his eyes, appeared to go to sleep, but he didn’t. He said, eyes still closed, “Jackson had questions, too. He wanted me to tell him the names of my patients who live locally, as the majority do since my practice is here, so the FBI could interview them. I couldn’t do that, of course. My patients must have their privacy. They don’t deserve to be singled out, to have others find out they’re seeing me, and speculate why. I didn’t—”

  “Dr. MacLean,” Savich said, interrupting him smoothly, “the fact is, with this disease—do you remember that you have frontal lobe dementia?”

  He nodded. “How do you like that for a crappy roll of the dice? The disease starts in the front lobes, then continues all the way back, wrecks everything in its path. I’ll end up like an Alzheimer’s patient, lying in the fetal position, waiting to die, all alone in my own brain, the most terrifying thing I can imagine.”

  That was the truth, Savich thought, and wondered how he’d deal with something as devastating as that if it hit him. He said, “I wouldn’t like it at all. You know this disease causes you to say things that are inappropriate?”

  “I’m a doctor, Agent Savich. I’m not stupid. I know all of this. I did a lot of reading about it after I was diagnosed at Duke.”

  Savich continued. “Sometimes you remember what you’ve said and other times you don’t.”

  “Sorry, what did you say?”

  “Sometimes you—”

  “That was an attempt at a bad joke, Agent Savich,” Dr. MacLean said, grinning up at him. “But please understand, no matter what was wrong with me, I would have sworn on the grave of my grandpa that nothing could make me say anything to anyone about my patients. It’s my goal to help them, not harm them.” He paused and sighed. “But I know I have. Jackson told me.”

  “You’ve already spoken about three of your patients to a friend and layperson, in public. It would appear that one of your patients found out about it, and you scared him or her so badly that he or she has made three attempts on your life. Two attempted hit-and-runs, here and in Lexington, and then the bomb on your plane on your flight back to Washington. If it weren’t for Jack’s piloting skills, you’d be dead, as would he.”

  “It’s so bloody difficult to believe I could do something like that.”

  “I imagine it is,” Sherlock said. “We need you to tell us about the patients you spoke about to your tennis partner, Arthur Dolan. Perhaps we’ll eventually need the names of all your patients, but it’s likely the person who wants you dead is one of the three, particularly since Arthur Dolan was killed shortly thereafter up in New Jersey.”

  His haggard face suddenly looked austere. “That’s ridiculous. I never said anything to Arthur about my patients. He died in an auto accident, always did drive too fast. Molly was screaming murder, but I told her to take a Valium, everyone said it was an accident.” He suddenly seemed to calm, and said, his voice light, “Do you know, Arthur had a great backhand, but he was slow. I usually won our matches. Still, I’ll miss playing with him. It was such good exercise. He’d come down here one week, I’d go north the next. He was also a golfer, better at it than at tennis. Arthur and I only talked about sports, he didn’t know anything else.

  “Now, as for that car nearly hitting me in Lexington, I know it was a drunk driver. The cops agreed.” He sighed. “Poor Arthur. At least for him, it was fast and clean and over with.”

  “And the first attempted hit-and-run here in Washington, sir?” Sherlock asked.

  “It was the Plank area, lots of drugs there. Maybe it was someone whacked out on heroin. The guy split. I would, too, after being such a jerk.”

  Why all this denial? Savich wondered. Or had his brain simply reduced it to nothing, only a footnote, and who cared? Savich said, “And the bomb in your plane?”

  There was dismissal in his light voice. “That’s a no-brainer. Jackson’s a federal cop, he has enemies, don’t you think? Bad guys who want revenge?”

  Savich met Sherlock’s eyes for a moment, then focused again on Dr. MacLean’s face, those gray eyes clear now, filled with sharp intelligence, insult, and fear. “You don’t remember speaking about three of your patients to Arthur Dolan?”

  His clear, smart eyes focused solidly on Savich’s face. Anger washed color over his pale face. “What the devil do you mean? Tell tales of my patients to a friend? Naturally not. What kind of professional ethics do you think I have? Besides, I told you, we only talked about sports.”

  Down the rabbit hole, Savich thought. He said patiently, “No, sir, it has nothing to do with your ethics, it has to do with your disease.

  “When we were investigating the first attempt on your life, we found a bartender at your golf club in Chevy Chase who’s known you and admired you for years. He said he remembers listening to you speak to Arthur Dolan over martinis. He remembers you speaking about three of your patients, all well known, and that’s why the bartender listened, and didn’t forget.” Unfortunately, the bartender had been working so he didn’t hear all that much, but enough to know something was very wrong.

  Dr. MacLean looked affronted, then, inexplicably, the anger and insult died out of his eyes and he began to laugh. The laugh must have hurt his ribs or his chest because he drew up short, breathed lightly for a moment, then said, his voice suddenly confiding, deep and rich, like a storyteller’s, “Was one of the names Lomas Clapman?”

  “Yes,” Savich said. “Why don’t you tell us about him.”

  Dr. MacLean’s eyes glittered; he looked suddenly revved, excited, and there was something mischievous in his manner, like he was flirting with make-believe and being drawn right into it. “Clapman’s an idiot, a buffoon, all puffed up in his belief he’s got the biggest brain in the known universe. He worships himself, lives happily mired in self-deception. Ah, how he hates Bill Gates. He always calls Gates ‘a little bugger. ’ I mentioned that many people think Bill Gates is not only extraordinarily smart, he’s a stand-up guy, what with his foundation doing more good for people than any of the so-called relief agencies. Why not see if he could outdo Gates’s foundation? He could certainly afford it.

  “You see, I was trying to pull him away from this obsession he has with Gates, trying to channel his energies toward a positive goal. It didn’t work. He yelled at me. You know what? I leaned back in my chair and laughed back a
t him. He threw a paperweight at me and stormed out.” Dr. MacLean shook his head, still laughing. “What an unprincipled yahoo. I didn’t see him again after that. He didn’t even call to cancel his weekly appointments.”

  Before the disease had struck him, Sherlock doubted she would have ever heard Dr. MacLean speak in that sneering, dismissive, mocking voice about a patient. Had he really laughed at his patient? She doubted it. She wondered if he would remember speaking like this to her and Dillon. She said, “Did Mr. Clapman tell you anything that, if made public, could hurt him?”

  “Yes, certainly,” MacLean said, no hesitation at all, not a single protest about physician ethics or scruples. “Lomas built his company on the back of his supposed best friend and partner. He sold his first plane design, some sort of low-flying tactical aircraft, to the government back in the early eighties—fact was, Lomas stole his friend’s idea and schematics right out from under him. His partner was an inventor, his head in a different reality, and he didn’t even notice when Lomas put the patents under his own name. As for the partnership agreement, it didn’t cover the patents. The poor schmuck killed himself maybe fifteen years ago, dead broke. Can you believe that?”

  Sherlock said, “Was Mr. Clapman seeing you because he felt guilty about what he did?”

  “Not at all. He thought he deserved every unethical dime in his coffers. Nah, he saw me once a week because he wanted to brag about how great he was, and I was forced to sit there for fifty minutes and listen to him. His wife left him, you know, and I can’t say I blame her.”

  Savich said, “If that got out, I imagine it would have considerable negative impact on Mr. Clapman personally and on his company, not to mention lawsuits from his partner’s widow and family.”

  “You think Lomas tried to kill me? Excuse me, is trying to kill me? To keep me quiet?”

  “Possibly,” said Savich. “But you know, it just doesn’t seem enough to me.”

  MacLean laughed. “Lomas also falsified performance trial data, massaged the stats on his fighters to meet government requirements. I told him to put a halt to that, that it would come to light, things like that always did. I remember he actually giggled, said it was all history now, anyway.”

  “Bingo,” Sherlock said.

  MacLean stared at them, a drug-happy smile on his face, his eyes glittering, a bit manic. “You think old Lomas would try to knock me off for that? He told me straight out that everybody does it, that the Pentagon knows everyone does it, and so they simply make allowances, they even have tables that show the range of acceptable deviations, that sort of thing. He said it was all a big game.”

  Sherlock said easily, “Could you tell us exactly why Lomas Clapman was seeing you, Dr. MacLean?”

  “He was impotent. After all the tests and a couple of tubs of Viagra, his doctor recommended he see me, see if his inability to sustain an erection was mental or emotional.”

  Savich said, “Did you help him?”

  “I’ll tell you, Agent Savich, Lomas is so filled with envy and arrogance, I think it would take God himself to help him.” MacLean closed his eyes, leaned his head back against the pillow, and sighed.

  EIGHTEEN

  Savich said, “The bartender our agent spoke to said you also talked about Dolores McManus, a congresswoman from Georgia.” And Savich waited to see if he would continue to talk with candor and cynicism, or would revert to the psychiatrist renowned for his discretion.

  MacLean closed his eyes for a moment, hummed deep in his throat, carefully rearranged himself a bit to ease his ribs. They watched him give his pain med button a couple of pushes. Several minutes passed in silence. MacLean said, “Sorry, I just wanted to float about for a little bit, such a lovely feeling. These drugs are first-rate. Ah, Dolores—you strip away all the glitz and glamour and the attention her position has brought her, and what you’ve got is one simple basic human being—not many frills or mental extras, if you know what I mean.

  “I wanted to sleep with her, I knew I could please her, but she wasn’t interested.”

  Sherlock’s mouth dropped open. This was a kick. She said, “Dr. MacLean, you propositioned a patient?”

  “Oh no, I merely thought about it. I could tell she’d never see me that way.” He sighed. “Even though she’s nearly as old as I am, she still has gorgeous breasts, nicer than Molly’s. Three kids’ll make your breasts sag, Molly tells me, and then says to count my blessings. Molly’s always been big into counting blessings. Even with all this crap, she still tells me I’m her biggest blessing.” He continued without pause, “It was difficult to keep my eyes on Dolores’s face, to listen to all her crowing. She was so proud of being on the A-list, wouldn’t shut up about all the famous people who call her by her first name. Then she’d switch gears and crow for the umpteenth time about how her background hasn’t slowed her down. She’d been a housewife with a college degree in communications, no work experience of any note, raising two kids, but she had one major asset—her mouth. She never hesitated to mix it up with the mayor, the governor, the newspapers, the phone company. It was her successful assault on the EPA that got her elected to her first term. She cut them off at the knees about a local cleanup project they weren’t funding.

  “Being elected to Washington simply gave her a bigger canvas. I have to admit, watching her take on all comers—it’s a treat. She can spin on a dime, make you believe you just left the room when in reality you were actually coming through the door. It’s her only talent, and makes her the perfect politician. As for substance, I guess she has about as much as any of her colleagues.”

  Sherlock asked, “Do you remember telling Arthur Dolan if she had anything in her past that could harm her if made public? Something so grave she’d feel threatened?”

  “I never told Arthur a thing, I’ve already told you that. I wouldn’t. Would she feel threatened enough to kill me? Of course not. Everything in her past is nickel-and-dime stuff—really nothing much at all, except that she murdered her husband.”

  They stared flabbergasted at MacLean, saw his eyes go vague, the manic light die out. He was about to go under. He’d given himself one too many doses of the pain meds. This congresswoman murdered her husband? The bartender hadn’t heard anything about murder.

  As if on cue, the door opened and Dr. Bingham looked in. He listened to MacLean’s vitals, but didn’t attempt to engage him in conversation. They all stood by his bed and watched him drift off.

  Dr. Bingham nodded, then straightened.

  Savich said quietly, “Do you have a moment?”

  Sherlock shut down the small recorder in her bag as she left the room.

  Once outside in the wide hallway, Dr. Bingham asked, “Was he alert? Did he make sense?”

  Savich thought about how to describe one of the strangest interviews he’d ever tried to conduct. “He was alert, yes, and he made perfect sense, for the most part. But it was how he spoke of his patients, his family, his tennis partner—it was like there were no brakes between his thoughts and what came out of his mouth. He didn’t seem to realize he was saying outrageous things, vicious things, and he spoke so matter-of-factly. Without the requisite social buffing, I suppose his descriptions of his patients are painfully accurate.”

  Sherlock said, “But his disdain, Dillon, his contempt for them—I simply can’t imagine that’s how he normally thinks of his patients. Then he’d become himself again, I guess you could say. Serious, ready to fight to the death for the privacy of his patients. It was an amazing interview.”

  Dr. Bingham said, “Given his reputation, I would agree with that. It’s a very sad thing that’s happening to him, this dementia, and the resulting loss of self. It’s a horrible thing, in fact, horrible.” Dr. Bingham shook their hands, walked away, his head down, hands in the pockets of his white coat, and Sherlock would swear she heard him humming.

  Sherlock said, “Dillon, do you think it’s possible Dr. MacLean’s having us on, maybe making a lot of this stuff up?”

&nbs
p; Savich shook his head. “He might have exaggerated part of it. I don’t know.” And to Agent Tomlin, he said, “Take good care of Dr. MacLean. This guy’s a huge target.”

  “No one gets past me,” Tomlin said. “You can count on that, Agent Savich.”

  Savich was aware of Tomlin staring at his wife until they entered one of the elevators at the end of the long corridor.

  Sherlock said as she pressed the lobby button, “Are you inclined to believe that Congresswoman McManus murdered her husband?”

  “We’ll find out soon enough.”

  “I wonder if that was why she went to see a shrink—you know, bad dreams, guilt, remorse.”

  “There’s that,” Savich said, and pulled her against him, kissing her until the elevator stopped at the third floor and a bleary-eyed intern staggered in.

  NINETEEN

  Slipper Hollow

  Tuesday

  It’s a beautiful day,” Rachael said, shading her eyes and staring up at the clear blue summer sky, the thready white clouds. She pushed her hair behind her ears, tugged at the skinny braid. “Hard to believe there’s so much actual bad out there in the world.”

  “I fear bad is rampant in the land,” Jack said. “But it’s not right here, in Uncle Gillette’s world.”

  “Unlike Uncle Gillette, I never thought of Slipper Hollow as confining, never considered it a place to escape from. It was always a sanctuary, a haven where I’d be safe. Of course, I was a kid. Looking back now, I recognize that Mom was restless, wanted to go out on her own.”

  He looked at the braid in her hair, plaited closer to her face this morning. When she leaned her head to the side, it cupped her cheek. He said, “I really like the braid.”

  “What? Oh, thank you. Jimmy liked it, too.” Her voice shook a bit on his name.

  “For the most part,” Jack said, “I agreed with your father’s politics.”